Our Mississippi History Curriculum

We began a study of Mississippi History when we started back to school this semester. Originally I had planned to use a purchased curriculum, for Olivia only, but I recently heard some less than favorable reviews about it, and then when I tried to install it.....(it was a computer based curriculum), I could tell that it just wasn't going to work for us.

So I went to Plan B.

I ordered some books about Mississippi and its history, provided the children with some blank maps of Mississippi and three ring binders, and we were set!

Our daily plan is this:

1. I read aloud from two of the books to all of the children.

This is one of the books I am reading aloud. It is providing a very colorful history of our state!

Disclaimer! Do not just give this book to your children to read! Parts of it are gruesome (describing the activities of Indians, outlaws, and various people who took the law into their own hands). I am reading this aloud, and am skipping the disgusting parts.

This is the other book I am currently reading aloud. The title is Must See Mississippi, 50 Favorite Places. I am reading about one place each day.

2. After we read these books, we head down to the schoolroom and work on our Mississippi notebooks. I am having them copy or write from memory one interesting fact from that day's reading. Next, they are marking on a blank Mississippi map the place we read about. They have also colored and labeled a map of the three primary Native American tribes of Mississippi, and they are coloring various state themed pages for the notebooks too. As we cover more of the history, we will be adding appropriate pages. Olivia is also reading several pages daily from a book that I am using as our "text". I am reading it too!

The "textbook"

The following books are other books that I plan to read aloud after we finish Adam of the Road, a book set in Medieval times that we did not finish before Christmas break.

I really like it when all of my children can study the same subject at the same time. For many years, I used KONOS curriculum, and my three oldest children studied every subject except math and grammar together. For the last couple of years, it has proved too difficult to conduct unit studies....the children were getting older, and now we had two preschoolers in the mix. But for now, our Mississippi unit study seems to be going fine. I plan to add some crafts and cooking for the younger children as it fits.

One of the advantages of homeschool is the ability to change course midstream when needed!